Our house has a garret I never went up to until I retire… Now I’m up there almost every day unless I have to stay in bed until another spell passes.

Paul’s not a veteran of Vietnam but he goes there in his dreams to watch his brother Tim walk in hazy streams sprayed with Agent Orange before he

Holiday Parties Millie comes home bawling from another holiday party and Willie asks what’s the problem. Millie says her friends are cheese…

He asked and so I told him. The “cancer” poems stem from cancer in the family. Daughter’s terminal. Son’s a five-year survivor.

Elmer’s an old stag now shedding antlers snorting among the trees but sometimes Martha after her shower

We’re upset when vandals desecrate a cemetery and disrespect the dead not so much when doctors vandalize the womb

They’re the oldest couple my wife and I know and we’re no pups either. Peter out for a walk leans on his cane often

Someone you respect does something that sticks in your craw like a fish bone dining in a crab shack. You try to cough it up

The weather report the night before said a foot of snow maybe more, heavy and wet.

For years Rocky’s Diner had always done a great business for breakfast and lunch but his dinner business had fallen off recently as folks moved to the suburbs, got married, died or simp...

A clerk in a health food store became upset when I said I didn’t see anything I wanted since I wasn’t a vegan or vegetarian and liked my

Every evening, up in my rooom, I try to finish a poem but Chicago is hot and it’s better outside,

You have the back rent and come home from work and find everything in a mountain out on the lawn with the kids sitting on the curb crying

They were always close Mom and Faye No father around Mom painted flowers Faye planted them

You were a little older than three the day your father taught you how to pee, standing up. Your father trumpeted your triumph and your mother laughed in the kit…